Savannah Sly asked me his question on Twitter, and I replied that I think it’s most likely from cards. In card games like rummy, a “trick” is one hand, and to “win the trick” or “turn the trick” is to win that single hand, though not necessarily the whole game. So I strongly suspect “to turn a trick” is closely related to the general “that did the trick”, meaning “that thing just accomplished what I was trying to do in the moment”. Turning a “trick” in sex work, getting one gig, is like winning one hand in a very long game of cards.
After I’d given this answer, a reader chimed in with this link wherein a non-whore attempts to trace the origin to the French triquer, due to a slang usage meaning “to fuck in a bestial fashion”. My sense is that this is a false cognate; it’s not unusual for languages to have words which resemble those in other languages, but have nothing to do with them either etymologically or semantically. For example, the German word gift means “poison”, but the French poisson means “fish”. The thread following the original attempt at derivation is quite interesting in that it’s made up of a bunch of men trying to trace the meaning of a word used by women to the client side of the equation, when obviously that’s silly. I’m often fascinated by amateurs’ attempts to explain the demimonde when they know nothing about it, as exemplified by the one dude who attempts to derive it from 19th century criminal slang by claiming that street whores working with robbers was once “common”; of course it was nothing of the kind, as reflected in the fact that there are a number of historical slang terms for such women to differentiate them from honest whores. Obviously, even professional lexicographers cannot be certain of the derivation of a word, but given the origin of the term in the US of the early 20th century, I think my hypothesis a much stronger one than either the “French” or “criminal” hypotheses.
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Thanks for the explanation! On a side note: In Norwegian (which is similar to German in many respects) the word “gift” means “poison” but also means “married”. The latter meaning stems from the Old Norse word “gipt”, which means “gift” or “dowry”. How poison got mixed into this, though, I have no idea. 🙂
A “trick” in card games is not even a hand, it’s usually a single card from each player (some games allow multiple cards from each player, but it’s never a full hand). Also, French has both “poison” (which was taken in English with the same meaning) and “poisson”, which sound quite distinct (z-sound for poison, s-sound for poisson). “Crime” is more interesting for linguistic comparison: the French and English words are cognates (both from Latin), but they don’t have quite the same meaning (in French, “crime” is the most serious kind of law breaking, which would be a felony in English).
Erik: administering poison to someone is commonly called “giving them” poison in English, and it is this that is the connection. As you noted, the word in Old Norse from which “gift” (in English as well as German ans Norwegian) is derived does indeed mean gift or present, among other things.
Re: triquer
My sense is that this is a false cognate
Yup. A “trique” is a club or a stick you beat someone with, from which derives the word “triquer”. Even though it doesn’t take that much imagination to understand these in a sexual sense (which is documented, see #2 from the bottom), I wouldn’t say that this use is common. What would have been a plausible path from French argot to English anyway? Perhaps another example of the propensity of attributing “decadence” to the other, e.g.: “French letter” vs. “capote anglaise”?
In English (and French), if I’m slightly pedantic, I wouldn’t “give” a poison or a medication, but would “administer” it, which may or may not involve deceit. German, at least the modern dialect, the proper verb would be “verabreichen”. That’s a bit distant from “give”, “donner” or “geben”.
But it indeed seems that “Gift”, “Mitgift” and “geben” are connected if you go back in time. I would nevertheless take all that with a grain of salt. I had on my shelf Oxford, Robert and Duden etymology dictionaries. Some virtually identical words in EN, FR and DE were attributed wildly different origins in the various books, which affected my trust in them. (I would have to dig them up to provide concrete examples). How is language invented anyway?
In addition to the preceding, it occurred to me that the word in French closest to “trick” is “truc” and not “trique”, making the proposed explanation even more implausible.
A “truc” can designate a thingie, a trinket.
A “truc de magicien” is the same a “conjurer’s trick”. “Il doit y avoir un truc”: “There must be some trick”. It can also be used in the sense of “hack”, e.g., “un truc pour décoincer la serrure”: “a hack to unstuck the lock”.
The verb derived from “truc”, “truquer”, essentially means “to cheat”.
It can certainly be perceived in a sexual meaning, like probably any other expression if your mind is attuned. “On a fait des trucs ensemble”: “We did stuff together”.
Checking up on the inventory of the French language, I am surprised to learn that there was a fairly direct equivalent to turning tricks, dating back to at least 1901: Faire le truc. Se prostituer. Further down the page there is an earlier reference from 1876. So there is some convergence between French and English, but in this case I think it comes more from a general desire of not naming things directly than from a direct connection.
Minor pedantic babble follows.
Yes, the common French noun “poisson” means fish.
The French word “poisson” is pronounced “pwah-sohn”, where “pwah” more or less rhymes with the English or American interjection “ah” or “aha”. “Sohn” more or less rhymes with the French name “Jean”, as in Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
French “poisson” pronunciation does sound anything like the English or American “poison”, which is typically pronounced with three syllables.
The similar spelling is about all the two words have in common.
You do remember that I’m from New Orleans, right? And that I grew up hearing French almost as often as English? And that I have a degree in English, including elements of linguistics? And that in this very sentence you’re referring to I discuss false cognates?
The pronunciation of the two French words is also similar. Only the second consonant sound changes (s vs z). By the way, “on” (nasal o) and “an” (nasal a) are distinct phonemes in French, so poisson doesn’t rhyme with Jean at all. Source: I’m French.
@Some Guy, Somewhere
Got it:
That’s why I said “more or less rhymes”. Far better for a native French speaker to explain than a non-French speaker like me.
My main understanding of “poisson” pronunciation is from mathematics, Poisson probability distribution, Poisson’s elliptic PDE generalization of Laplace’s equation, Poisson-Boltzmann equation, etc. all after Siméon Denis Poisson.
There may have been student jokes that dealing with Poisson is worse than taking poison. But the two words were not pronounced the same at all.
Very aware of all that. I don’t think I contradicted anything you wrote.
False cognates can look somewhat alike and sound somewhat alike, but have different meanings and etymology. You pointed out trick and triquer.
False cognates can look somewhat alike but sound different, and have different meanings and etymology.
I was distinguishing “poison” and “poisson” as the latter.
I described pronunciations simply because I assumed not all your readers speak French, not because I thought you didn’t.